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"419" Scam – Advance Fee / Fake Lottery Scam

The so-called "419" scam is a type of fraud dominated by criminals from Nigeria and other countries in Africa. Victims of the scam are promised a large amount of money, such as a lottery prize, inheritance, money sitting in some bank account, etc.

Victims never receive this non-existent fortune but are tricked into sending their money to the criminals, who remain anonymous. They hide their real identity and location by using fake names and fake postal addresses as well as communicating via anonymous free email accounts and mobile phones.

Keep in mind that scammers DO NOT use their real names when defrauding people.
The criminals either abuse names of real people or companies or invent names or addresses.
Any real people or companies mentioned below have NO CONNECTION to the scammers!

Read more about such scams here or in our 419 FAQ. Use the Scam-O-Matic to verify suspect emails.

Click here to report a problem with this page.

 

 

Some comments by the Scam-O-Matic about the following email:

Fraud email example:

From: "Sir Willem Jacobus" <willem.jacobus@y7mail.com>
Reply-To: willemjacobus7@yahoo.dk
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:33:39 +0600 (BDT)
Subject: Business suggestion




From Sir Willem Jacobus.

Greetings,

I work with one of the international bank (B.O.A) here in REPUBLIC OF
BENIN, Although the world is very small place and hard place to meet
people because you don't know who to trust or believe, I have gone through
your profile and I will be glad if you could consider my proposal and let
me work with your esteem organization or as an individual. After viewing
your profile, I made up my mind to confide this urgent and confidential
business suggestion to you.

Be rest assured that everything will be handled confidentially.

It has been seven years ago, that most of the greedy African Politicians
used our bank to Launder money overseas through the help of their
Political advisers.

Most of the funds which they transferred out of the shores of Africa were
gold and oil money that was supposed to have been used to develop the
continent.

The Political advisers always inflated the amounts before transfer to
foreign accounts so I also used the opportunity to divert part of the
funds hence I am aware that there is no official trace of how much was
transferred as all the accounts used for such transfers were being closed
after transfer.

I acted as the Account Officer to most of the politicians and when I
discovered that they were using me to succeed in their greedy act, I also
cleaned some of their banking records from the Bank files and nobody cares
to ask me because the money was too much for them to control.

As am sending this message to you, I was able to divert Fifty Two Million,
Seven Hundred Thousand United State Dollars ($52.7 MILLION USD) to an
escrow account belonging to no one in the bank.

Now the bank is very anxious to know who the real beneficiary of the funds
is because they have made a lot of profits with the funds. It has been
more than five years now and most of the politicians are no longer using
our bank to transfer funds overseas, majority of them don't have the power
again, because their tenure has expired. The $52.7 MILLION USD has been
lying in the bank as unclaimed fund.

I will soon retire from the bank and without wasting time I will like the
fund to be release into your account, so that I will come to your country
for investment and sharing of the fund. There's no one that is going to
ask you any question about the funds because everything is well secured by
me.

If you are interested in this transaction do reply me but if you are not
interested please do me a favor by deleting my message from your box ok.

Thanks,
Sir Willem Jacobus

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